Inked

Well, it's 2 days after the first tattoo session and I have even more good news. Another Cameraman/Director is on board. His name is Jesse Senko. Jesse and I share a lot of interests. We are both Art Directors, we both love film and photography and we both have an affinity for being as far from a city as we can. Jesse and his family are doing something very interesting. They are trying to stop going to the supermarket by starting their own organic farm to feed themselves. You can learn more about this inspiring project at his blog, Crackers. I'm very happy to have Jesse on board.


Lots of people have been asking me how the first Tattoo session went. Well, it hurt mostly. But not the way you might think. I've got lots of tattoos and quite frankly the pain is addictive. Ask most people that are serious about tattoos and they'll all say there's a part of them that likes the pain. The tattoo is on my chest but it's my back that hurts the most. Sitting in metal chair for that long was very uncomfortable. 


The tattoo process doesn't mix so well with the film-making process. If you've ever been involved in making a film or commercial, you'll know that it can take an hour of set up time to capture a few seconds of motion. Then you wait another half hour to capture 5 more seconds. You can see where this is going. I sat in the same position from roughly 5:30pm to midnight. This was amplified because we are shooting the entire tattoo in stop motion as well. That means after Pete puts in a few centimeters of ink, we stop, change all the lighting and shoot it. Then we change all the lighting again and shoot a few seconds of needle close-ups. It's an entire night of shoot, change lighting, shoot, change lighting and on and on and on. The outline of this particular tattoo would normally take Pete about an hour or so. But by filming it, it took about 7 hours.


It's all worth it in the end though. Chris and Johnathan said we got great footage. Below are a few behind the scene photos of the night. A huge Thank You goes out to Pete, Aric, George, Chris, Johnathan and Westside for making the first tattoo session a success.